CHAP, ii VESTA AND THE VESTALS 55
the steep and dusty street in the sweltering heat of a southern
noon would have been trying to elderly gentlemen (of whom
there was no doubt a fair sprinkling among the fifty prytanes)
and to hurry down to their office immediately after lunch
would have been exceedingly bad for their digestion. It was
natural therefore that a building should be put up for their
convenience in the neighbourhood of the Council Chamber
where they could dine and sacrifice without the expenditure
of time and energy which daily visits to the prytaneum during
business hours would have entailed. This building was the
Tholus or Round-house.1 On the other hand the distinguished
persons whom Athens delighted to honour by providing
them with a free breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day of
their lives, as they had no business to take them down to the
Ceramicus, had also no need to shift their quarters there,
and they continued to take their meals regularly up at the
prytaneum.2 The Tholus where the prytanes dined was a
round building with a pointed, umbrella-shaped roof.3 So
unusual a shape of building was probably adopted for some
special reason, and this reason could hardly be other than
that this was the shape of the prytaneum itself, of which the
Round-house was in some respects the representative. When
with the growth of the city in a new direction it was found
to trudge from the New Market (in l Pausanias, i. 5. I.
the Ceramicus) to the Old. They a Q h separation of ^ ^ sets
would have been obkged to cross the rf ^ <£ A h s
saddle between the Acropohs and the . £ d' Westermann ^
Areopagus and ste the southern face p J ,J,O/^ cyclop&die,^. <r/r,«m.
of the Acropohs, wrthout so much as Th * d '
¥• DpT; *£tifle ^ ?urtiust
makes P utarch (Tteseus, 24) assert rf p ,', ( > h
roundly that the prytaneum of his d ^ we ^ rh
day stood where it had stood sance the > ^^ r'eferenc^Pto &
^ f T^tUt tf?T * ' P«sons who fared sumptuously every
p. 264). All that Plutarch does say £ ^ rf ^ ^ ^
is that the prytaneum of Theseus ^ fellow-citizens, or perhaps rather
stood 'where Ae city (ri «<rru) now {e^ ^^ to ^ ^^
s ands »-a suffiaentty vague expres- ^^ ^^^
BOH. Dr. Dyer may be nghtm cross- south^of £ } ^ d
mg swords with Curtms on this ques- } ^ *^
tion, but if he is to vanquish so re- ' &
doubtable a sabreur he would need 3 Hesychius, Harpocration, Suidas,
sharper weapons than a misplaced T?im.&eu.s)Lex.Pfof.Js.v.G6\o$m>£tym,
comma and a little bad Greek. Magnum, s.v. <rKial.